Fields in Blocks

[mjfarrell]

As promised a few weeks ago I have been
busy evaluating and testing Fields and other
Sheet Set Manager tools as they apply to
Land Desktop.
Firstly there is a lot of potential here.
Only, I wonder why fields do not seem to function
once they are made part of a block?
It would be really nice if they did, then there use as
place holders for data in a title block (think attributes)
would be great as one wouldn't have to fill in the data.
Only in my test, fields don not appear to function
once they are placed inside a block.
Any solution to this, or is this a wish list item?

[Glenn Pope]

As far as I can tell fields only work in a block if they are in an attribute. Fields in mtext won't. I would think this is a wish list item.

[mjfarrell]

Thanks G!

What I was trying to do was use a field AS if it were an attribute.
There is a disconnect of sorts, in my head probably, that one
would have to use TWO tools to achieve the desired end-state.
So, IF I were to use the ATTDEF command and THEN use a field
then they would be able to embed the Field in my title block blocks.
It was just a little unnerving to think that these Fields would
not be anchored like an attribute leaving them subject to many
accidental edits or partial edits should one move the border and forget to grab
all of the fields associated with it. Let me go test this now and see if
these nested fields will work as desired.

[RobertB]

As far as I can tell fields only work in a block if they are in an attribute. Fields in mtext won't. I would think this is a wish list item.

I doubt it will ever happen. Think of the nature of a block. All objects in the block definition are static, i.e. they are not reevaluated every time a block is inserted or moved. Attribute definitions are read and attribute references are created as sub-entities to the block reference. This is what give attributes the ability to be modifiable on a per-insertion basis.

On that note, for our titleblocks we have moved to using separate MText objects for SSM support, that are grouped to the XRef of the static titleblock.

[mjfarrell]

Ok, so there looks like two possible 'best' uses of FIELDS.

One, put them in GROUPS to corral then together, and hope
the pickstyle variable saves them from being scattered about.
Or perhaps even make the title block an unselectable group?

Two, use ATTDEF to make them as attributes inside a block.

Seems a little odd that if one simply used a FIELD and included it in
a block definition that it would not function as an attribute.

It is also crossing my mind that to get the proper divisions and sub-division
of a project to work using the sub-folders options that one would be forced into
a very cumbersome directory structure.

[dhallett]

I seem to remember seeing somewhere that a field can be used as an attribute if the attribute value is set to be constant. Since we just got ADT5 and haven't even had time to load it yet, I can't test this myself. Maybe you could try it out and let us all know!